A speaking game

Lesson outline

In this lesson, students played a variation of a classic British TV game show called "Call my Bluff". The original game show used obscure words but for this lesson, I wanted the students to describe pictures and to talk about themselves.

Procedure

I divided the class into teams of three.

Each team then chose its team name.

A team was chosen and asked to sit at the front of the class, where three desks were placed. On each desk was an envelope. Two of the envelopes contained pictures, while the third contained only a blank piece of A4 paper. Students were then given thirty seconds to prepare themselves and think how they were going to describe their picture. After thirty seconds, each student took turns to describe their picture - the one with the blank piece of A4 paper having to make up a description of their own.

Upon listening to all three descriptions, the remaining teams then had to guess who was bluffing. If the person bluffing was identified correctly, then two points were awarded to that team. For each team that failed to identify the bluffer, the team describing was awarded one point. The game continued in this fashion until all teams had participated.

I had planned to do a second round, whereby each team member would think up two truths and a lie and then present to the audience. The audience would have to identify the lie in each case and points would be awarded accordingly. However, the one-hour lesson was taken up by just the picture round and they did not have time to do the second one.

The lesson began with three demonstration videos of the English teachers explaining pictures in order to instil some interest and to rouse their curiosity.